FS2_Open is the original FreeSpace 2 engine, released to the open source community by Volition in 2002. Ever since then, a dedicated team has been hard at work keeping the engine up-to-date, enhancing it, fixing the bugs, and porting it to non-Windows platforms.

The time between now and its release depends entirely on how much support the SCP can get from the community. Most of the staff is busy cracking down on bugs like crazy, but there are many things anyone can do to help them in this quest. First of all, you'll need a copy of the 3.6.10 Beta MediaVP files, found here, then you can check out the Recent Builds forum to grab a Build and start playing/testing. The builds being released for testing should have all planned features implemented but from here on out, no more big additions (excepting possibilities in which they fix a serious outstanding bug). And there are a lot of bugs, and even as they get squashed, more bugs are being reported. We need your help to keep these numbers shrinking. But, you can't code? Well, just finding unknown bugs is important, just play the games and pay attention. Keep in mind there's never a such thing as too much information. Before submitting a bug report, ask yourself: What's the person who reads this likely to ask me for next? If you wait for them to ask for it instead of taking the effort to add it then, you're only increasing the turnaround time on that bug. The more bugs that get squashed now, the better 3.6.10 will be. And the better it is, the sooner subsequent builds will be able to be released, along with many features that haven't made the cut now.